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(More customer reviews)Hats off to Barry Mazor's diligence and hard work in researching this book and then writing it in such a way as to make enthralling for the casual reader as well as the scholar.
Rodgers has long been cited as a major influence in country music and as the "Father of Country Music". It has long been understood by those who cared to think about it, that Rodgers had also - directly or indirectly - influenced many artistes from other genres outside country music. How deeply the average record-buying member of the public, or even the average Rodgers collector, had really pondered the extent of this influence may well be open to challenge.
In this book Mazor opens up the reader's awareness of Rodgers' music by setting it against the political and cultural context in which it was born. He brings to life vividly the emotion and circumstances described in the lyrics that Rodgers sang, as they were at the time that he sang them.
He then illustrates the power of Rodgers' performances by analysing in fascinating - but never boring - detail, how Rodgers songs and music influenced countless performers from all genres - not just country - and not only in the 20s and 30s when Rodgers was alive, but also in the eight decades or so since his death.
Mazor will take you to places you had never considered - and can substantiate his claims, not just with heresay but with facts, interviews, photographs, etc that prove the point. By succinctly building on the cultural indicators that prevailed when Jimmie sang, Mazor reveals to the reader insights that take you through racial, gender, musical genre, economic and social considerations that illuminate the music and talent of the great man.
OK, some of the points made rest upon artistes who only ever recorded one Rodgers song; arguably such points are tenuous. But one must also consider that those artistes need not have recorded Rodgers' songs at all - so why choose his songs if they had not been touched by them in some way?
You can make up your own mind. What this book will do is make you look at Jimmie Rodgers again if you are amongst the already converted - and if you see him as a mournful white man who sang black blues - as many do - you will be forced to confront the limitations of your own perceptions! This book will make you think.
Rodgers was not the first country singer to yodel but he was the first to have such a lasting and profound influence on so many people from so many eras and so many cultures for so long. This book will help you understand why that is. A Great read!
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Meeting Jimmie Rodgers: How America's Original Roots Music Hero Changed the Pop Sounds of a CenturyIn the nearly eight decades since his death from tuberculosis at age thirty-five, singer-songwriter Jimmie Rodgers has been an inspiration for numerous top performers-from Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams to Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, and Beck. How did this Mississippi-born vaudevillian, a former railroad worker who performed so briefly so long ago, produce tones, tunes, and themes that have had such broad influence and made him the model for the way American roots music stars could become popular heroes? In Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, the first book to explore the deep legacy of "The Singing Brakeman" from a twenty-first century perspective, Barry Mazor offers a lively look at Rodgers' career, tracing his rise from working-class obscurity to the pinnacle of renown that came with such hits as "Blue Yodel" and "In the Jailhouse Now." As Mazor shows, Rodgers brought emotional clarity and a unique sense of narrative drama to every song he performed, whether tough or sentimental, comic or sad. His wistful singing, falsetto yodels, bold flat-picking guitar style, and sometimes censorable themes-sex, crime, and other edgy topics-set him apart from most of his contemporaries. But more than anything else, Mazor suggests, it was Rodgers' shape-shifting ability to assume many public personas-working stiff, decked-out cowboy, suave ladies' man-that connected him to such a broad public and set the stage for the stars who followed him. Mazor goes beyond Rodgers's own life to map the varied places his music has gone, forever changing not just country music but also rock and roll, blues, jazz, bluegrass, Western, commercial folk, and much more. In reconstructing this far-flung legacy, Mazor enables readers to meet Rodgers and his music anew--not as an historical figure, but as a vibrant, immediate force.
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